Another wonderful day on the bike. The distance was pretty short just over 90 km. We started in the chill of the morning with most everyone wearing jackets. When I get a chance to upload the photos you’ll see some shots that I took as we left. Normally we ride in small groups of 2 to 4, but this morning for some reason about half the group left at the same time.
The first part of the ride was a lot of up and down as we made our way off the ridge we were camping on, then it was a very nice downhill swoosh as were rolled into a large town at about 25 km, just the right time for coffee and pastries.
It was a nice flat ride after that for about 20 more kilometers. By this time we had picked up a nice little group of 5 riders and set up an informal pace line that really makes the ride go fast.
At about the 45 km mark we started the highlight of the day a 1000 meter (about 3000 foot) climb over a mountain before dropping into Munster. The climb was about 25 km long and sometimes the road pitch was more than 11 percent, but the road was shady and the temperature cool at 20 degrees c (68 degrees F). I hate to compare the climb with others but the pitch and shade was similar to Old la Honda that I've ridden in the Bay Area and to total from bottom to top reminded me of parts of Angela Crest in Southern California, both wonderful rides.
The road topped out at a ski resort at 75 km and our lunch was waiting for us. We hung out for a while at the top until we couldn't delay any longer. the remaining 18 km into Munster was a zooming switchback downhill into town. We stopped several times to take photos, I’ll upload them when I can. The views were stunning.
As we reached Muster, we were ready for something to drink and stopped at a bar that was already filled with riders from out group. After a drink, it was a short ride to the campsite where we arrived at about 3PM.
I gotta say that the Garmin GPS has really been useful on this trip. I takes me some time to enter the route into the unit the night before, but the unit has provided us a level of confidence that allows us deviate from the route and find our way back on to the course with no problem.
It has also alerted us to turns that we would have missed, but it beeping and messages on the screen has kept us from going off track.
Well that’s ride from today, Happy Biking,
Brian
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